The World’s Top eBay Sellers

UPDATED: This post has been updated in September 2017 with the latest eBay data.

For this post I’ve pulled together a big list – a very big list – of the top 1,000 eBay sellers worldwide. If you want to get straight to the data, here’s a jump down to the full list. An extract of the top ten is right here.

Who are the top 1,000 eBay sellers?

These are the sellers who have gained the most positive feedback in the last 12 months, and they are all Premium Store owners (or the international equivalent such as Featured Shops in the UK). Feedback volume is a useful approximation of the number of units sold, but is not directly linked to sales revenue.

Below, I’ve drawn some insights from the data. I’d love to hear your own observations in the comments at the end.

How many top eBay sellers are cross-border traders?

39% of the top 1,000 eBay sellers are serious cross-border traders – they are based in one country, and have a Premium (or Featured) eBay Store in another. That was 31% in 2014, 35% in 2015, and 38% in 2016, so the growth appears to be slowing down.

Of those international eBay traders, 85% are based in China or Hong Kong – 330 sellers in total, up from 281 in 2014, 315 in 2015 and 320 in 2016. In our 2016 list, businesses from outside China accounted for most of the growth in cross-border selling. This year it’s a different story. Chinese business account for all of the (relatively small) growth in international ecommerce.

Which countries do Chinese businesses sell to?

This year, there has been a surprise decrease of 8% in the number of businesses on the list selling from China to the US. But, the big change is in the number of Chinese businesses selling on eBay in the UK, up 42% from 53 to 75 of the top 1,000 sellers.

In summary, one third of the top 1,000 eBay sellers are Chinese traders selling to the US, Europe and Australia – up from 25% in 2014, 30% in 2015 and 32% in 2016. There is no change in the number of international sellers from other parts of the world.

Australia has been a big success story for eBay, and has also attracted a large number of Chinese sellers. Amazon is due to start selling in Australia in 2018, and looks likely to massively disrupt the ecommerce industry there.

Top cross-border eBay sellers from outside China

Cross-border trade is not completely dominated by China. The world’s largest cross-border seller on eBay is German: xa-electronics, at number eight on the list. Belgian philatelist, and list stalwart, matthijs_philatelie, is at #19 and Dutch seller vidaxl_de is at #59. The only other cross-border seller in the top 100 from outside China is Singaporean seller bitb99 at #79 on the list, up from #511 last year.

Of course, these are not the only international sellers, just those with Premium/Featured eBay Stores outside their home country – they primarily sell overseas, it appears. Huge numbers of eBay sellers trade across borders, but most still make the majority of their sales in their home country.

Which countries have the most top eBay sellers?

These are the countries with the most sellers in the top 1,000.

#

Country

Sellers

Feedback (1)

1

China

315

23,131

2

UK

221

19,348

3

US

196

18,752

4

Germany

171

15,402

5

Australia

24

1,702

6

Hong Kong

15

1,084

7

Malaysia

11

832

8

Singapore

9

571

9

Thailand

7

483

10

Italy

4

192

1 – The sum of feedback (in thousands) received in the last twelve months

The top three sellers on the list remain the same as last year, but there’s a new entry at #5 with thrift.books of the US rocketing up from #299 in 2016. Amazon success story pharmapacks are at #26 on the list, up from #480 on last year’s list.

Looking at the country standings overall, China has gained 10 sellers in the top 1,000, Germany has an extra 12 sellers, the UK has lost 18, and there has been little change elsewhere. China is very secure in its position at the top, but if the UK and Germany continue their current trajectories, we could see Germany leapfrog the US to take second place, while the UK drop to fourth. Could this be the Brexit effect?

Which are the top eBay product categories?

These are the categories which the top 1,000 sellers list products in the most.

#

Category

Sellers

1

Home & Garden

208

2

Clothing, Shoes & Accessories

166

3

Phones & Accessories

110

4

Auto Parts

98

5

Jewelry & Watches

61

6

Business & Industrial

57

7

Books

44

8

Computers

42

9

Crafts

27

10

Sporting Goods

27

11

Health & Beauty

27

12

Collectibles

22

13

Music

17

14

Toys & Hobbies

16

15

Tools

13

eBay is best known now for consumer goods, so it’s not surprising to see phone accessories, clothing, home and garden, and jewelry featuring in the top five. It’s more unexpected that 6% of high-volume sellers target the Business & Industrial category, with 57 sellers in the top 1,000 – up from 48 in 2016.

Clothing, Shoes & Accessories grew dramatically from 138 sellers in 2014 to 182 in 2015, but fell back a little in 2016 to 175 and has continued its slide to 166 this year, remaining at number two in the top categories chart.

Phones & Accessories decreased from 173 in 2014 to 135 in 2015, and only 110 sellers in 2016. It remains at that level this year. Home & Garden is once again a big gainer, growing from 132 sellers in 2014 to 148 sellers in 2015, then 185 in 2016. It tops the list this year with 208 sellers.

Jewelry & Watches has continued it’s decline. Having dropped from 100 to 76 sellers in 2016, it has fallen further this year to only 61 sellers.

Are there any top sellers left in collectibles?

There are strong showings from eBay’s past as a venue for hobbyists and collectors: Crafts are targeted by 27 sellers and Collectibles by 22. Even the specialist Coins & Paper Money category still has six of the top 1,000 sellers, and Stamps has seven sellers.

This year we can’t determine the main category for eight sellers on the list – because they currently have no items for sale. This could indicate an increase in the number of high-volume eBay sellers going bust, or simply that more sellers had set their store to “vacation mode”. In some cases this may have been due to businesses being put on hold after recent natural disasters.

1 – Sellers without an indicator were not in the 2016 list. Hover over the indicator to see the 2016 position.
2 – Category names have been standardized to allow comparison.
3 – Shows each sellers’ category with the most listings.
4 – Total feedback received. This is shown instead of the better known Feedback Score, which can be an inaccurate indicator of sales volume.

About the Data

Web Retailer commissioned research to collect this data in September 2017 from eBay’s websites in Australia, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Poland, Singapore, the UK and the US.

Sellers with Premium Stores in the US (Featured Shops in the UK) Anchor Stores/Shops, and equivalents on other eBay sites are included. It’s possible that some high-volume sellers are not included, if they were omitted from the eBay store directory at the time of the research.

The list is ordered by positive feedback in the last twelve months. Feedback is an indicator of sales volume, but not revenue. Not all buyers leave feedback, so the number of units sold will be higher than the volume of feedback received. Reports from Tamebay and EcommerceBytes suggest the typical proportion of buyers leaving feedback is between 40% and 70%, with a bias towards the lower percentage.

103 comments on “The World’s Top eBay Sellers”

You didn’t say but I assume this list was by revenue. One thing that I noticed is that there is a lot of media sellers in this list: books, video games, music, and DVDs. One wonders how sustainable this business is or whether they are just serving as liquidators for other companies.

I see you make note of sellers having a premium store outside of their home country. I have never considered this myself. What advantage would it be? I sell in UK, OZ, and other english speaking countries by just extending my listings.

Hi Jack, actually the list is by feedback in the last six months – so an approximation of sales volume rather than revenue. I’ll see if I can make that clearer.

It would be interesting to dig further into the business models in use. I was a little surprised by the variety, and yes media does figure prominently. Maybe it’s an indication of the low margins in media, and therefore the need for very high volumes?

I don’t think there’s a benefit of using a non-home eBay site to make your store premium/featured (it will appear in that country’s premium stores directory, but I doubt that has much value). I’m using it to indicate that a seller is almost entirely focused on selling to a country other than their own, if that makes sense.

For media you would definitely need volume. I was grocery shopping at my local wal-mart today and was amazed at the amount of media product in bins at insanely low prices. Perhaps I am just ahead of the curve but I haven’t paid for real media (non-downloadable) in a couple of years so selling it seems a bit dated.

Wonder what the ASP is for these sellers and what return rate or non payment rate might be for them.
Non payment rate and return rate is significant in many categories and may not be taken into account in this if its mostly feedback related.

Andy yes as a separate list as that would help us lesser mortals to gauge whether or not anchor shops are worth the extra bucks, since we signed up for an anchor shop we haven’t noticed any increase of sales and considering we have gone from 1000 items to nearly 2500 listings now.
Cheers Dave

I made my decision for an Anchor shop (yes, I got one) because I evaluated the number of free listings versus what i would pay for listing fees. My total fees are much less. This is in the US, your mileage may vary elsewhere. Easy enough to do the math based on your local marketplace’s rule.

Hi Andy, interesting post! I was just wondering, what do you mean by they are based in ine country but “have a featured store” (or anchor) in another? Do you mean their store comes up on the list for featured stores in that other country, eg in the US for a seller based in china, say?
And, they are still shipping from overseas to the customer, correct? Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t muddling it or missing something. Thanks again 🙂

Thanks Julia! Yes, that’s exactly it. They have upgraded their store to premium/featured/anchor using the eBay site in another country. I didn’t find any stores that were on the featured list on more than one eBay site, by the way, so I think that’s probably not possible to do. In most cases they will be shipping direct from overseas, yes. They could choose to hold stock locally to their buyers, but most will ship direct.

I was amazed to find such a comprehensive list, but I was totally stoked to find us on this list. I’m so proud of our team for making this achievement in under 16 months and I must give a big thankyou to you Andy for giving us a benchmark to work towards.

Hi there, I noticed your comment and I’m writing a paper on what makes a sensational ebay seller – would you please be able to give me some hints and tips on why and how you have become so successful? I’m based in Australia, so, would really appreciate your feedback. thanks Jules.

Hi Chris, the list is ranked by positive feedback in the last six months. Your eBay account discofashion had 2,698 positive feedback in the last six months, but number 1,000 on the list dynamicsounds00 had over 23,000 (at the time of the research, it’s now higher).

Do you mean sales revenue? I think feedback actually correlates well with sales volume (number of units sold). I don’t have a data source for revenue, but you could use Terapeak to research specific sellers.

Hi Samantha, actually I intended to remove that column and have done so now! It’s the number of “matching items” shown in eBay’s Premium Stores directory. The number is really unreliable – a store with 6 “matching items” in the stores directory could have 440 or 784 (or any other number!) results when you go to their store. Maybe there is some logic to it, but I haven’t been able to figure it out.

Awesome collection of data Andy, my store just missed the list (19,500 in the past 6 months). Although revenue is a hard metric to gather data on, I think you would find it to be all over the board with with some correlation to category. For example a seller that specializes in cell phone cases maybe have an average purchase price of $5.00 while an auto parts seller like myself has an average purchase price of around $55.00. even if that store is processing 2 or 3 more transactions than I am, my GSV is many times greater. We would all apprecieate it if eBay would pubically share this data, not a chance that will happen tho…. eaither way, thanks for putting this together.

I think that would get you closer but with some outliers in the data. For example: a seller that sells iphones vs. one that sells iphone accessories. Same top level category with much different average sale price. Pulling terapeak data on every seller would really be the best way estimate this variable using a sample size of a 30 day window or something to find an average store transaction price. The question then boils down to… who is more of a top eBay seller? The store that sells 100 cars a month or 10,000 sets of brake pads?

Hi Andy, I am umo88 on eBay and I believe I should be on this list. In 2014 we will do 50,000, $25 transactions for about 1.25 million in business. Check us out we have an amazing model. If you are interested in a unique model we are it!

I must agree with Scott, I am an electronic component re-seller and buy just about all of my items from umo88 and I do believe most electronic component re-sellers are right in there with me. You are by far the #1 electronic component seller on eBay with the best prices by far!

Hey Scott, Hope you are doing great!
I see that you are talking about a business model here. I find it interesting. I have been trying to get my company to the next level and I will like to talk to big sellers. I would like to do some investment in software. My listing, inventory and shipping teams is giving me a lot of overhead. However trying to find the right tools to adapt myself to the new incoming challenges. Thank you in advance!

Hi Andy, thanks for the post. Do you have any material that would help me start selling on Amazon as a self fulfill merchant?
I’ve tried Ebay using DSD only to have my account permanently shut down by Ebay.
I’m looking for something that really works and so i’m reaching out to you
Thanks for everything Andy

Hi,
I am just curious about how you rank top eBay sellers, based on transactions, feedbacks, or money amount. Due to Universal Postal Union’s regulation, Chinese sellers were given a lot of advantages due to a much low shipping cost, especially for low weight items. Also, China is a world factory. But most of Chinese sellers sell light weight items or cheap items($0.01+free shipping). If your ranking is based on the number of transactions or positive feedbacks, they will surely be listed on the top.

Also , a lot of US based eBay sellers have warehouses in China, therefore they are not exclusively US sellers.

This is awesome! How did you compile this list? Did you hire people to manually enter all the data? Is there a tool where I can submit a query for ebay sellers and it will come back with a list? Thanks!

Hi: Just came across this & find it very interesting & informative. I did a really quick run through & what jumped out at me is that there are only 42+/- out of 1000 with 100% feedback, a LOT between 99-99.9% with many just barely over 99%, and tons between 98-99%, quite a few just barely over 98%.
An awful lot of us small sellers maintain our 100% positive feedbacks because we are so customer service oriented. The big guys must value quantity over quality in a lot of cases.
I am looking forward to the next version. Could this be announced in the monthly newsletter?
Thanks. Nancy

Thank you Nancy. That’s an interesting analysis. Perhaps the big sellers lack the personal touch to push their feedback score higher. And while a 100% score is something to be proud of, I don’t think it makes a big difference either to buyers or eBay’s algorithms. So the big sellers probably don’t think it’s worth the extra effort.

We’re working on updating the list now and it will be announced in a couple of weeks.

Yes, it does appear they should be listed as they had 67,023 feedback in the last 6 months. If they haven’t changed their user ID, then there was probably a bug of some sort meaning they weren’t listed in the eBay seller directory at the time of the research.

Great Stats! Some of the largest sellers on the list are using StoreFeeder to automate a lot of their manual tasks – without automation of stock control, order processing and channel management sellers are usually restricted by the age old enemy – time.

I would suggest using terapeak to peg each sellers asp over the last 90 days and then multiply by feedback x 2 to estimate total GSV. There is a massive difference between a company who sells iPhone cases with an asp of 5 bucks and a auto parts seller with an asp of 100 bucks as different sellers will vary wildly and the industry uses GMV as the standard size benchmark. Right now you are basically saying that a dollar store is larger than a car dealership simply because they have more transactions. Just an idea to take the data another step.

You state “Feedback is an indicator of sales volume”. I would like to make a huge emphasis on “indicator” as using this method is, I believe so out of whack, and is not even worth reporting for the following reasons;

1) As you have recognized, feedback has fallen to now what looks like about 40 to 50% of actual sales. A lot of people also dont like leaving negative feedback, when it should be, again this screws up the numbers because they dont even leave a neutral or positive. The old cliche thrives still, “customers rarely complain…….they just never come back”. It leaves a door opened that marketing and sales strategists should be trying to work out how they turn these type of customers into their most important – i.e honest, constructive feedback that can be priceless, if fixed.

2) This overall feedback includes all positive feedback? As a seller and Buyer? If thats the case, which I believe it is, then how can it be an indicator even towards sales volume when buying, positive feedback by the seller ( that is the seller makes a purchase and receives positive feedback) is counted towards a “sales volume” indicator???

Yes absolutely feedback is only an indicator. However, I don’t think the proportion of buyers that leave feedback is a problem for this ranking. It is still an “indicator” (i.e. correlated to sales volume) whatever the percentage who leave feedback.

On your second point, yes it will include feedback received as a buyer. But, and this is a huge “but”, even the lowest-ranked seller (at #1000 in the main list) received 44,000 feedback in the last 12 months. We are taking about substantial businesses here, not hobbyists. I expect the vast majority of sellers at this scale will not be doing any buying at all with the same account. To make any kind of impression in their feedback score through buying would take a big effort anyway, and would simply not be worth doing.

Appreciate your reply and agree with what you say to a degree. It was I guess a comment I needed to make in relation to reading some other comments in relation to the reports themselves yet the true reflection and how feedback is gained by a buyer I dont think is spelled out correctly.

All that put aside, the figures Im looking at are of great concern in relation to the % of customer actually giving feedback. Especially, in my opinion, this is one of the greatest attributes to an eBay store. Im seeing it heading south to about 38.5%.

Would be interested to know your thoughts and have there been any reports or studies done on the reasons (or human nature and/or generational change) for this figure to be so low as I recall 5 years ago was more like 70% (off the top of my head).

Hi Glenn, I think it’s due to eBay’s change away from a buying and selling community to a more transactional site.

In a marketplace with a strong community spirit, feedback is a normal way to maintain and build the community links. In a marketplace which is more about making purchases from profit-driven companies, there’s not much motivation to leave feedback. It takes time and there’s no real benefit.

Interesting to see how much ebay has changed. the antiques market for much of it is slowly tanking. not that long ago antqiues would’ve been a top selling category but today it has been greatly overshadowed by new(er) consumer goods and will only continue to evaporate from the online landscape.

Great information Andy. Easy to see why China has the top slot on numbers of sellers when they have a low cost shipping option in China Express. The minimum shipping cost a US seller can have through eBay is $2.61, which is more than the cost of the item and shipping that many of the Chinese sellers are listing.

Yes I agree. The “agreement” that the USPS and China have put together for super low shipping rates have penalized American sellers. As an eBay seller for the past 20 years, I have noticed that Chinese products are flooding the market and taking advantage of these low rates that Americans cannot get from our own USPS. Unbelievable! President Trump – are you listening?

Very accurate and amazing resource. Awesome work. I have seen few familiar sellers that I used to browse on ebay and I would agree upon seeing them on that spot, especially on Home & Garden category. Thank you Andy

Hi Andy – I have just skimmed through your post, and its pretty cool. lots of info. I wanted to ask an ebay question. I started to list items on ebay 4-1/2 months ago. I’m doing pretty well, but I wanted to ask – how important is feedback ? I’ve been listing mostly items from Aliexpress on ebay, and have had a bit of a problem with feedback, because it takes ~ 60 days to get delivery from China to almost anywhere. So, for the most part, I’ve been ignoring it, because I can’t tell when an item has been delivered. My ebay sales have slowed to a trickle within the past two weeks. Is this related to my feedback issue, or is it something else ?